Writing Update #6: I finished my novel!

Word count: 84,094

I just finished writing the first draft of my novel! Woohoo!

I’m so happy this stage is finally over. It’s taken me about ten months to complete the draft, which is ten times longer than I’d originally thought. However, I wasn’t writing the whole time and took a few super-long breaks in between.

Drafting has had its fun times, and not-so-fun times, but now I’m ready to move on to the next step: editing. I’ve never edited a book before so it’ll be a big learning experience. I’ve already started the first read-through of the manuscript, and let me tell you, there’s a lot of work to be done. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to it. After all these months of rough-drafting, my inner editor, a relentless perfectionist, is itching to be let loose on my writing.

My goal is to revise this book over the summer and come September, have a (for the most part polished) manuscript. We’ll see how that goes. I’m feeling pretty optimistic at the moment. 🙂